Canada Steps Up Keystone XL Charm Offensive

摘要

A steady stream of Canadian politicians has been heading to the US in recent weeks, all bent on drumming up support for TransCanada PipeLines' highly controversial Keystone XL pipeline project, which would connect the Alberta oil sands with refineries on the US Gulf Coast The project's fate rests with US President Barack Obama, and it has become increasingly and worryingly clear in Canada that he will judge Keystone not on the number of US jobs it will create or the boost it will provide to US energy security, but on its environmental impact Last week saw Canadian Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver in Houston and Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall in Washington, following Alberta Premier Alison Redford's visit to the US capital last month. They and the pipeline's other backers received some encouraging news earlier this month, when the US State Department issued an environmental review predicting "no significant impact" from Keystone XL's surface footprint and construction. TransCanada has also mapped a new route that avoids an aquifer in Nebraska — Obama's primary reason for rejecting the original project in early 2012 (PIW Jan.23' 12). But the president has made it clear since his re-election in November that he wants to leave a legacy on climate change, which could lead him to block the pipeline on the basis of the oil sands' heavy carbon footprint — unless Keystone XL's proponents can successfully argue that oil sands resources will merely go elsewhere, increasing life-cycle emissions through transportation and/or refining (PIW Feb.25' 13).